1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to digital cameras and more particularly to a system and method for preventing power failure damage to media files within a digital camera device.
2. Description of the Background Art
Modern photographic technology presently includes a variety of digital camera devices which capture image data by electronically scanning selected target objects. Digital camera devices often process and compress the captured image data before storing the processed image data into internal or external memory devices. These memory devices typically include various types of nonvolatile memory which are accessed in read/write operations that store and access captured image data.
Protecting the captured image data during the memory access operations is an important consideration of both camera manufacturers and camera users. Camera designers must therefore anticipate the occurrence of any events which might endanger the integrity of the captured image data.
A power failure during a memory read/write operation within a digital camera device is one example of an event which might seriously jeopardize image data. For example, the digital camera may be accessing a file, rewriting a file directory or rewriting a file allocation table at the time a power failure occurs. The intervening power failure may prevent the successful completion of the memory access operation and thus damage integrity of the image data.
Further, a power failure may interrupt various camera memory functions which typically resume their respective tasks whenever power is restored to the digital camera. The interrupted functions, however, would be unaware that a power failure had intervened. The interrupted memory functions would thus be unaware of the hardware reset which results from reapplying power after the power failure. This confusion between the system software and hardware would potentially endanger camera operations. For the foregoing reasons, an improved system and method is needed for preventing damage to media files within a digital camera device according to the present invention.